Transparent Flash drop-down menu & HTML in Firefox 2.0.0.3

[sinrise]

I have a Flash drop-down menu that is 800x200 pixels. It has a
transparent background and drops down over the rest of my page, which
is all html. In Firefox, everything under that 200px flash swf cannot
be clicked on, including my form elements. This is not the case in
IE6. Everything under the transparent area works fine.

http://www.hydramediagroup.net/lucastemp/events.html

I've scoured the web and google groups and found a few topics
regarding this problem but no answers as of yet. Please someone help!

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed (e-mail address removed) writing in

I have a Flash drop-down menu that is 800x200 pixels. It has a
transparent background and drops down over the rest of my page, which
is all html. In Firefox, everything under that 200px flash swf cannot
be clicked on, including my form elements. This is not the case in
IE6. Everything under the transparent area works fine.

http://www.hydramediagroup.net/lucastemp/events.html

I've scoured the web and google groups and found a few topics
regarding this problem but no answers as of yet. Please someone help!

You know, I have come to really hate flash menus. What's wrong with a
regular menu? A lot of the time, I have flash turned off, simply because
a lot of moving things are annoying and distracting. Then I come to some
site that looks interesting and I can't navigate because of a flash menu.

I don't know what kind of program you used to generate this, but I would
throw it in the trash. Abuse of tables and abuse of form elements.
Don't nest tables, and don't use textarea just because it scrolls.
Tables are for tabular data, not for positioning elements. Forms are
used to let a user interact with the application, not for presentation.

You have 3 markup errors, one of which is so bad that I cannot validate
your CSS. Interestingly enough, when I view the page without CSS, I can
get to the "form" without any problem.

Please consider is the fact that Join the Wine Club is not visible with
images disabled. Don't you want visually disabled people to join the
club, or people who may have disabled images because they are on a slow
connection?

Additionally, is the textarea background supposed to be pale blue? I
have my background set to that color, and if the author did not specify a
background color, my pale blue will show. You might also want to think
about contrasting colors, the contrast may not be large enough for
visitors with low vision problems.

 

[Bergamot]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed (e-mail address removed) writing in


I don't know what kind of program you used to generate this,

Dreamweaver. You can tell by the comments. ".dwt" is a dead give away.

Abuse of tables and abuse of form elements.

Looks like a good example of what *not* to do.

I hope the client isn't paying for that mess.

 

[Chaddy2222]

Dreamweaver. You can tell by the comments. ".dwt" is a dead give away.


Looks like a good example of what *not* to do.

I hope the client isn't paying for that mess.

Yeah, the point about the client is an interesting one. Although it's
probably one of those "great I now have a copy of DW so I can make a
website" type jobs. DW can be good, but like any WYSIWYG web tool,
placed in the wrong hands it can make some dam horible websites. I'm
only parcially sited and could make better looking sites then that.
What's with makeing the main content scroll in such an odd way anyway?
I don't see the point really.

 

[Bergamot]

probably one of those "great I now have a copy of DW so I can make a
website" type jobs.

You are right - having DW doesn't make you a web designer - but it looks
more like this is a marketing/graphic design business trying to be a
1-stop shop by offering web design, too. Unfortunately it also looks
like they don't have any competent web people to go with that service.

 

[J.O. Aho]

I have a Flash drop-down menu that is 800x200 pixels. It has a
transparent background and drops down over the rest of my page, which
is all html. In Firefox, everything under that 200px flash swf cannot
be clicked on, including my form elements. This is not the case in
IE6. Everything under the transparent area works fine.

Try another version of the flashplugin, it may or may not work. As flash isn't
supported well in all operating systems and even official plugins from
adobe/macromedia, the transparency do not work.

I've scoured the web and google groups and found a few topics
regarding this problem but no answers as of yet. Please someone help!

I would suggest you use one of the many CSS based menus, those works a lot
better in most browsers and less depending on operating system as FF/SeaMonkey
are portable.

 

[Travis Newbury]

I have a Flash drop-down menu that is 800x200 pixels...

<snip...>

Throw away that stupid Javascript detection BS because it doesn't
work. Then read this:

http://alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay.

Also no one guarantees support for the transparent attribute except
IE.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

<snip...>

Throw away that stupid Javascript detection BS because it doesn't
work. Then read this:

http://alistapart.com/articles/flashsatay.

Also no one guarantees support for the transparent attribute except
IE.

Do you mean the flash's transparency Works in all my non-IE browsers!
OP's problem is that the flash is an OBJECT whose dims include the the
drop-downs whether they are displayed or not and since the overlay the
scrollbar you cannot grab it. IE is the only browser that it works
because of a well published bug where IE's form elements will not obey
z-order stacking...

Travis's tip is a good one. Using a CSS menu in your page will solve
this problem because while the menu is not in an active state, the
submenu list is physically no longer overlaying the scrollbar!

BTW, total inappropriate use of a textbox, your can style a DIV to do
what you desire.